Growth and fulfillment lie on the other side of fear

[rifat28dddd]

I make it a point to hit the gym three times a week. I attend all my kid’s performances and school events. When I’m not with clients and working from my home office I try to block out the 15-minute window when my kids arrive home from school so I can greet them (a little thing that means a lot to both of us). And to help keep me accountable to my sleep schedule, I borrowed an idea from a great HBR post; Why You Need an Untouchable Day Every Week. I created a recurring daily calendar invite that triggers every day at 10:30 PM and says in all caps (as if it’s screaming at me): “YOU SHOULD BE SLEEPING BY NOW!”. It’s amazing how well that works!

It’s true what they say about comfort zones. Nothing bangladesh telegram data good ever came from them. As a four-time start-up guy, I was no stranger to change and challenge. I often invited it. But stepping away from a senior, quota-carrying leadership role to start your own business can be a daunting proposition. Will people like what I do? Will I generate enough revenue to support my family? What if the business doesn’t perform consistently? Like most fear-based objections, you can rationalize and unpack them, ultimately coming to grips with the fact that the worst-case scenario isn’t usually catastrophic. But oftentimes, if you truly want to see what’s on the other side of your fear, you simply have to jump!

My best advice for those trying to reconcile their fear and decide if they should go out on their own? Take the reverse angle. Don’t ask yourself “Should I do this?” You can probably come up with tons of reasons why you shouldn’t. Instead ask yourself, “If I don’t do this, will I regret it?”. If the answer is yes (as it was with me), take the steps to set yourself up for success, then do it! I promise you will never regret it!One of the things I love doing is hosting sales leadership meetups. It’s a chance to connect with peers, trade stories about the challenges and opportunities we’re seeing in our sales operations, and bounce ideas and perspectives off each other in an effort to improve.

During a dinner with 20 such leaders, three amazingly consistent themes emerged when it came to operational metrics, recruiting, and key factors influencing their technology purchasing decisions.

1. Optimize sales cycle efficiency for both wins AND losses
Many sales leaders are focused on improving the efficiency of their operation in terms of securing new business. That is, analyzing each stage of the sales and customer buying process to determine which steps are generating the most friction so that that friction can be reduced. But some leaders are taking a counterintuitive but highly insightful approach to analyze their “losing” efficiently as well. TTL or “Time to Lose” was a metric describing the efficiency with which our team loses deals. In other words, we can sell more by losing faster.